Welcome!

In February of 2009, my husband and I bought our first home located on a few acres in Johnson, Vermont. We live here with our dog, Ollie, two cats: Elvis and Atticus, six Nigerian Dwarf goats: May, Chutney, Poppy, Juniper, Willow, and Jokers Wild, and about fifteen laying hens. And to top it all off we welcomed our daughter, Isabel, into the world on January 11th, 2011.

We're slowly updating our 1850's farmhouse while steadily working towards a healthy, meaningful, self-sufficient life together.

This blog details our endeavors along with our successes and failures- all in good fun. Thanks for stopping by, hope to see you again soon!

May

May
May and I enjoying some sunshine

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Gardening Update

Lovingly Posted by Melissa Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Last week we were fully into June and our garden had yet to be planted besides a few cold weather plants here and there.  The major road block was that we hadn't touched our garden beds in weeks and the weeds took up residence with a vengance.  All our lovely rye grass and crimson clover that I planted last fall as a cover crop really burst into life and the beds looked more wild than ever.  As it was a little late in the game to try to cut all this into the soil we decided to just weed it all out and feed it to the pigs.  Oh yes, they loved that rye grass.  They squeeked and grunted as they picked through the piles of grass, finding the best pieces- pigs never save the best for last.

My family took pity on us and our lack of enthusiasm to get the garden in and they came over to help weed and plant.  We managed to get all the weeding finished and our potatos planted before the black flies forced us to retreat back to our porch for a bbq dinner.  Sometimes you just need a little help, ya know?

This past weekend the weather decided to take a break from the rain so Kyle and I decided it was time we finished this project up.  I planted the rest of our seeds while Kyle transplated the rest of the tomatos and peppers that were ready to go.  We still have a good deal of tomato and sweet pepper plants that have been started but just are still too small to move outside I think, they can wait.  I planted the dry black beans, sweet corn, summer squash, spinach, broccoli, bush beans, and our started celery plants.  I'm going to plant another round of carrots soon, once the rain lets up again.

So our garden is officially in.  Of course I still need to get our sunflowers and pumpkins planted, but those are just for fun.  Now its just a matter of getting weeding into my daily routine so we don't let it get out of hand again.

On another note, May is due to kid this weekend, give or take a few days.  Her udder is still small, but she has time.  I think she's just got a single kid in there as she is just so narrow still.  I'm hoping for a buck.  Chutney's doelings are growing strong and Poppy runs up to me each time I go out to the barn.  We ordered our disbudding iron last week so I'm hoping we'll see it soon, their horns are growing and with all the neighbors and small children that we have stopping by to check out our farm we don't want to risk it.

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